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!!!Obamapluralismspectacle: Barack Obama, the Power Elite and Media Spectacle 【특집】 !!!ObamaPluralismSpectacle: Barack Obama, the Power Elite and Media Spectacle Douglas Kellner (University of California, Los Angeles) Power elite theory played a significant role in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s among certain sectors of the academic establishment, and among some individuals who would come to constitute the New Left. C. Wright Mills, for instance, in The Power Elite argued that Big Business, Big Government, Big Labor and a growing military- industrial complex were coming to dominate American society and politics.1) Mills was also one of the first to see that emergent mass media were coming to be a powerful force that served the interests of dominant elites. In White Collar, Mills stressed the crucial role of the mass media in shaping individual behavior and in inducing conformity to middle class values. He argued that the media are increasingly shaping individual aspirations and behavior and are above all promoting values of “individual success.” He also believed that entertainment media were especially potent instruments of social control because 1) C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Boston: Beacon Press, 1956). 26 Douglas Kellner “popular culture is not tagged as ‘propaganda’ but as entertainment; people are often exposed to it when most relaxed of mind and tired of body; and its characters offer easy targets of identification, easy answers to stereotyped personal problems.”2) Mills analyzed the banalization of politics in the media, by which means “the mass media plug for ruling political symbols and personalities .”3) Perceiving the parallel between marketing commodities and selling politicians, Mills analyzed tendencies toward the commodification of politics, and, in The Power Elite, he focused on the manipulative role of media in shaping public opinion and strengthening the power of the dominant elites. In an analysis that anticipated Habermas’ theory in Structural Changes in the Public Sphere, Mills discusses the shift from a social order consisting of “communities, of publics,” in which individuals participated in political and social debate and action, to a “mass society” characterized by the “transformation of public into mass.”4) The impact of the mass media is crucial in this “great transformation” for it shifts “the ratio of givers of opinion to the receivers” in favor of small groups of elites, who control or have access to the mass media.5) Moreover, the mass media engage in one-way communication that does not allow feedback, thus obliterating another feature of a democratic public sphere. In addition, the media rarely encourage participation in public action. In these ways, the mass media foster social passivity and the fragmentation of the public sphere into privatized consumers. The rise of media power in the succeeding decades followed the 2) C. Wright Mills, White Collar (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), 336. 3) Ibid., 338. 4) Mills, The Power Elite, 298ff. 5) Ibid. !!!ObamaPluralismSpectacle: Barack Obama, the Power Elite and Media Spectacle 27 logic of Mills’ power elite arguments. Successful Presidential candidates in the U.S. had the backing of one of the two major Big Government parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and tended to carry out polices that would serve the interests of corporate elites, the military-industrial complex, the two major political parties, and Big Government. In the next section, I will argue that the presidency of the Bush-Cheney administration (2000-2008) followed the logic of power elite theory, but that the victory in the 2008 presidential election by Barack Obama points to a new political logic governed by the rise of media spectacle and a pluralization of U.S. politics. From the Bush-Cheney Administration to the Obama Era The Bush-Cheney administration carried out an agenda serving the interests of big corporations, the military-industrial complex, and the rightwing of the Republican Party during its eight years in office.6) Many major figures in the administration came out of the corporate sector, especially the oil and energy industries, and many came from the conservative wing of the Republican Party that served the military-industrial complex. Within its first days in office, the Bush- Cheney administration began the process of undoing the socially liberal regulatory politics previously enacted by the Clinton administration. Although its ambitious rightwing agenda was initially stalled, following 6) I refer to the Bush-Cheney administration rather than to the George W. Bush administration because of the immense role played by Dick Cheney. For my analysis of the Bush-Cheney administration that documents the claims made in this section, see Kellner, Grand Theft 2000 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001); Kellner, From September 11 to Terror War: The Dangers of the Bush Legacy (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); and Kellner, Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy (Boulder: Paradigm, 2005). 28 Douglas Kellner the terror attacks of September 11 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the Bush-Cheney administration was yet able to put through a rightist political agenda under the frame of the so-called U.S. Patriot Act. What is more, through military excursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, the administration furthered the interests of the military- industrial complex and awarded billions in contracts to corporations to which the conservative regime was tied, including Dick Cheney’s Halliburton corporation.7) Eventually, the oil and energy industries, the military-industrial sector, the housing and financial sector, and other corporations who had supported the Bush-Cheney administration were rewarded as the government passed legislation that deregulated these sectors and provided copious public contracts to corporations like Halliburton. The media largely went along with the turn toward the right, and, especially following the 9/11 terror attacks, did not directly criticize the Bush- Cheney administration. After the Hurricane Katrina fiasco in 2005, followed by the apparent collapse of the U.S. financial sector in 2008, the media finally began critique of the Bush-Cheney agenda. In retrospect, the Bush-Cheney era can be explained by the elite theories of C. Wright Mills in that during this era, Big Business, Big Government, and the military-industrial complex were aligned to carry out an agenda in the interests of these elites. The election of Barack Obama seemed to put in question classical power elite theory, although Obama’s challenges in office and the defeats received by Obama and the Democratic Party in the 2010 elections, suggest that 7)On the September 11 terror attacks and how they enabled the Bush- Cheney administration to push through a rightwing and corporate agenda, see Kellner, Media Spectacle (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). !!!ObamaPluralismSpectacle: Barack Obama, the Power Elite and Media Spectacle 29 elite theory still has purchase in explaining American politics and should not be abandoned out of hand in favor of a new pluralist theory of a postmodern politics. I will, however, argue that the phenomenon of media spectacle has become a central factor in contemporary American politics and society, and that this creates new political opening and politics. I argue that in the contemporary era of media politics, image and media spectacle are playing an increasingly important role in presidential politics and other domains of society. With the growing tabloidization of corporate journalism, lines between news, information and entertainment have blurred, and politics has become a form of entertainment and spectacle. Candidates enlist celebrities in their election campaigns and are increasingly covered by journalists in the same way as celebrities, with tabloidized news obsessing about their private lives. In this context, presidential candidates themselves become celebrities and are packaged and sold like the products of the culture industry. In this study, I will suggest some of the ways that the logic of the spectacle promoted the candidacy of Barack Obama and how he has become a master of the spectacle and global celebrity of the top rank. I will discuss how he became a super-celebrity in the presidential primaries and general election of 2008 and utilized media spectacle to help his win the presidency. Finally, I will discuss how Obama and his administration came up against the forces of traditional power elites, including relatively new forces of rightwing political power, that weakened his presidency and threatened his continued power after the 2010 midterm elections. But first I want to elucidate the power of media spectacle in contemporary U.S. and global powers and 30 Douglas Kellner the emerging role of political figures as celebrities. Media Spectacle, Celebrity, and Contemporary U.S. Politics In the contemporary era, celebrities are mass idols, venerated and celebrated by the media. The media produces celebrities and so naturally the most popular figures promoted by the media industries become celebrities. Entertainment industry figures and sports stars have long been at the center of celebrity culture, employing public relations and image specialists to put out positive buzz and stories concerning themselves, but business tycoons and politicians have also become celebrities in recent years. Chris Rojek distinguishes between “ascribed celebrity,” which concerns lineage, such as belonging to the Royal Family in the United Kingdom, or the Bush or Kennedy families in the United States; “achieved
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